QUESTION: The OAU put out a report today up at the UN
criticizing the United States among others about the
genocide in Rwanda. The former Canadian ambassador there
singled out Madeleine Albright, saying he doesn't know - he
doesn't understand how she, meaning Albright, can live with
it, meaning Albright was the US rep at the UN and criticized
the US role at the Security Council as undercutting efforts
to strengthen the peacekeeping force there. I wanted to
know what your thoughts of that criticism was of her and of
the US.

MR. BOUCHER: Let me say first of all that the Secretary's
personal role and personal feelings - she's talked about
this a number of times and has talked about the difficulty
at the time that she felt of being the US representative at
the UN and her feeling that we should have done more. And,
in fact, I think the President himself has been quite clear
in saying, during his trip to Rwanda in 1998, he said the
international community together with the nations in Africa
must bear its share of responsibility for the tragedy. We
did not act quickly enough after the killings began and we
did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful
name, genocide. President Clinton pointed out we cannot
change the past but we can and most do everything in our
power to help build the future.

So I think we've been quite open about our views in
retrospect on the situation there. Both the Secretary and
the President. We have seen the media reports concerning
this particular report but we don't have a copy yet. But I
do want to say that we've been very supportive of the
eminent persons group and its mission from the beginning.
The US advocated its creation and held lengthy consultations
with its officials. We do believe it's very important that
the international community seek to learn the lessons from
the events of Rwanda in 1994.

QUESTION: There was also a call for reparations. Would you
support that?

MR. BOUCHER: I don't have anything that addresses that. I
do think that we have been very active in supporting the aid
effort that's under way. We've provided over $100 million
of assistance to displaced and refugee populations in the
first year of the crisis. In 1994, we did more. I guess I
don't have a particular total figure but we've been very
active in support of aid efforts in the region.

The other thing, I think, to address is the President's
statement that he said we need to learn the lessons, we need
to do everything we can in our power to help build the
future. We have taken several steps to address the threat
of resurgent genocide in the region and, more generally,
improve the ability of the international community to deal
with the issue of genocide, should we again have to face
that task.

During his trip to Africa, the President announced two
initiatives for the Great Lakes region, the Justice
Initiative and the International Coalition Against Genocide
for the Great Lakes region. Through this initiative, we're
trying to counter the culture of impunity that's spawned so
much of the violence and we're trying to rebuild the rule of
law in the region. The International Coalition is still in
the formation process but that's an attempt to bring
together the states of the region to work systematically to
prevent counter-genocide. And we, as you know, have created
a position here in this building, the President and the
Secretary have, of Ambassador at Large for War Crimes
Issues.

Ambassador David Scheffers heads that office and he has
focused much of his work on Rwanda. The work that he does,
including the work of the Interagency Group on Atrocities,
is to detect early signs of possible genocide, other serious
violations of human law and to make recommendations to
policymakers about how to prevent them. So we are trying to
learn the lessons and we are trying to prevent this kind of
thing from occurring in the future.